that s the way the sausage is made, but they ve got to press on, and we all have to really push back on mitt romney and other republicans who say that they didn t have an opportunity to weigh in here. voters are imperilled. the democracy s imperilled. history will not absolve you of that. did the president wait too long to push hard for voing rights? i m sympathetic to activists who have been frustrate that had we haven t had a more robust campaign around these,s. i will say that the president has spoken a number of times about voting rights, said it s an existential matter for our democracy. i understand the frustration of activists who had hoped that we would have leaned into this sooner, but we also recognize this is a president who came in with an unprecedented pandemic he had to manage, economic crisis, foreign affairs crisis, all of these things have to be balanced in the agenda.
we stood up and pushed them forward that we would get a whole agenda of issues that we cared about from voing rights to health care to infrastructure relief from covid-19, and actually what we re seeing is that all of these things that were on the agenda, all of these things that got black voters to the polls are the very things that are being stymied right now from voting rights to police reform. black voters are not seeing the kinds of things that we want to see. now, the reason for that, of course, as you alluded to, has everything to do with the ways in which republicans are using procedure to block progress, and this isn t a recent phenomenon. in fact, the filibuster has been used many, many times to block progress in relationship to civil rights often for black people, and so i think it s time for the president and democrats in this moment to step up for the constituencies that stepped
you re not going to end the filibuster. senator schumer we said to him this week that all of these procedural votes, allowing people to vote without ending the filibuster is just stuff. i mean, it s just, you know, going through the motion. it s washington two-step. you have to end the filibuster. what should happen first is there should be an agreement. no infrastructure for bridges until we deal with the infrastructure of our democracy, agree to pass the florida people s act, voing rights and $15 minimum wage. let s agree on that. then sure, there may be some changes. right now there is no history that manchin has, number one, he could ever bring those republicans. number two, what he has proposed actually makes the bill so weak it doesn t deal with the problem. thirdly, we re talking about the greatest attack on voting rights since the civil war. why would you water down something that you re trying to